n’est pas le voyage qui compte mais le commencement du et pour
ca je mesure et l’epure sépure et je m’élance écrire millepages
mille-et-une pages pour en ¤nir avec en commencer avec l’écriture
en ¤nircommencer avec l’écriture et donc je recommence j’y
reprends ma chance et j’avance écrire sur écriture est le futur de
l’ëcriture je surécris suresclave dans les mille-et-une-nuits les
mille-et-une pages ou une page dans une nuit ce qui se ressemble
s’assemble pages et nuits se miment sensoimênt où le bout c’est le
débutand here I begin I spin here the beguine I respin and begin to
release and realize life begins not arrives at the end of a trip which
is why I begin to respin to write-in thousand pages write
thousandone pages to end write begin write beginend with writing
and so I begin to respin to retrace to rewrite write on writing the
future of writing’s the tracing the slaving a thousandone nights in a
thousandone pages or a page in one night the same night the same
pages same semblance resemblance reassemblance where the end is
beginGaláxias is, loosely speaking, written in prose, although its jagged right mar-
gin reinforces the notion of the page as “constellation,” its look perhaps more
Steinian than Joycean, created as it is primarily by rhyme (both auditory and
visual) and what we might call hyper-repetition. Haroldo’s text permutates
the words começo (commence, begin) and its variants like meço, recomeço,
remeço, acabarcomeçar, arremeço, as well as two other galaxies, the ¤rst refer-
ring to writing—escrever, escritura, sobrescrevo, sobrescravo (this last item
punning on the notion of writing as slaving)—and the second to the page in
its isolated or multiple incarnations: uma página em uma noite, or milumi-
noites milumapáginas, the page and the night becoming interchangeable. The
image of the circle, onde o ¤m é o comêço (où le bout c’est le début, where the
end is begin), is enacted phonemically and visually by the elaborate turn and
return of words and morphemes. In the words of Eliot’s East Coker, “In my
beginning is my ending”: acabarcomeçar, ¤nircommencer, beginend.
The long word acabarcomeçar, with its internal rhyme stands out visually
on the page, leading the eye in various directions that follow the paths of
começo and related words containing e’s and o’s. As the eye moves down the
page, the notion of writing as circularity—the tracing and retracing of words
de Campos’s Galáxias and After 185